Joseph O’Brien has a remarkable intercontinental, cross-code double in his sights this weekend with the prospect of breaking new Group One ground in Hong Kong on Sunday morning.
Sha Tin’s International Carnival is the last great intercontinental assembly of flat racing’s elite in 2025. Four Group One races worth over €14 million have attracted some of the world’s best including both Aidan and Joseph O’Brien.
Both are represented in the Longines Hong Kong Vase due off at 6.10 and live on Sky Sports Racing. O’Brien Snr gives his 2024 Irish Derby Los Angeles a final start before the colt begins a new career at stud while his son is represented by Al Riffa.
The Lion In Winter is Ballydoyle’s hope for the Mile at 8.00 while Galen faces a mammoth task in trying to overcome local superstar Romantic Warrior. He is chasing a fourth win in a row in the featured 10-furlong Cup off at 8.40. That race is worth almost €4.4 million.
RM Block
Los Angeles and The Lion In Winter give Aidan O’Brien an outside shot at equalling in his world record tally of 28 Group/Grade One victories in a season set in 2017.
However, the scale of the task in taking on not only the best of Hong Kong, but also Japan and the rest of Europe at the tail end of a busy year is colossal and the two Ballydoyle hopes have been drawn wide to boot.
Ireland’s perennial champion trainer is an almost annual Carnival raider although over the years it has yielded “only” a trio of Vase victories through Highland Reel (2015 & 2017) and Mogul in 2020. Luxembourg came within a nose of beating Romantic Warrior in 2023.
His son, though, has had just one previous starter. Latrobe was 11th in the 2018 Vase. But the 32-year-old trainer who has already tasted top-flight success international success in the US, Australia, Germany and France during less than a decade with a license is back at Sha Tin with intent.
If Galen and Dylan Browne McMonagle are outsiders against Romantic Warrior, Ireland’s new champion jockey and his boss can realistically hold out hopes of victory with Al Riffa.
As expected for a mile-and-a-half turf contest, the Vase is dominated by European horses including last year’s winner Giavellotto. Goliath and Sosie represent France while Eydon has Oisin Murphy on his back.
The Melbourne Cup turned into a non-event for Al Riffa who was left trailing off a slow pace at Flemington and finished strongly to be a never nearer seventh.
“This was an obvious place to potentially come after the Melbourne Cup. He didn’t have a hard race and came home really good from it, so we were happy to lock it in,” O’Brien told media in Hong Kong. “He’s a seasoned traveller. In actual fact he enjoys it. He’s shipped out here well.”
It is a potentially perfect finale to 2025 for Browne McMonalge, the 22-year-old prodigy who beat Colin Keane to the championship at home before recording an unlikely success on Ethical Diamond for Willie Mullins at the Breeders’ Cup.
The Donegal rider starts a three-month contract to ride in Hong Kong from January and as well as Al Riffa and Galen, has another spin on the Sha Tin undercard on Sunday. “It’s all going to be new, but you want to be riding against the best,” he said.
O’Brien added: “We do all the work every year, week-in, week-out, to have horses that can compete at the top meetings locally and internationally. At the end of the day our job as the trainer is to maximise the earnings of the horses and put them in the best spots that we can find them, wherever that might be in the world.”
The scale of his operation means those best spots can be almost anywhere. A pair of hurdlers will line up for him at Fairyhouse on Saturday, and two more horses will be in action at jump racing’s spiritual home in Cheltenham.
The main hope is Kim Roque who will have just a second start for O’Brien in the featured December Gold Cup, an established and valuable handicap with just 11 runners which has had a single Irish trained winner – Chatham Street Lad (2020) – in the last two decades.
Kim Roque is the sole raider this time and will need to step up on a course effort last month. Jockey Richie Deegan again takes the mount and will also be on Cinammon Coco in the opening Triumph Hurdle. He won on the flat at Dundalk a fortnight ago.
Saturday’s domestic action at Fairyhouse finishes with an interesting fillies bumper. Ballyburn’s half-sister Babyburn makes her debut while Ash Hobbs has already won a point to point. The value may be Sonny Carey’s Brosna Shine, third in the valuable Goffs Bumper at Punchestown last season.
